Microsoft releases PIX for Windows 10 to help developers optimize their games

Microsoft is throwing a bone to PC game developers with the release of PIX for Windows 10. Previously only available as a Xbox development tool, PIX allows developers to jump in to monitor and tune a game's performance for easier optimization.

PIX essentially uses the DirectX 12 API to give developers a clear look at every step of the rendering process. This allows the program to give a clear look at how the game is being rendered in detail, even down to individual frames. PIX also makes it easier to spot issues with corrupted data or synchronization.

PIX is available in beta for Windows 10 now for free, and it can be downloaded direct from Microsoft. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also provided a handy set of videos to help developers get started with PIX.

Reader comments

Microsoft releases PIX for Windows 10 to help developers optimize their games

PIX optimization is primarily for low-level optimization, the kind that only really works on consoles, where there is a fixed (or limited) set of GPUs. A developer could use PIX to super optimize for 100% efficiency on a 1080 card, but cause worse performance on ATI, intel itegrated or even lower end NVIDIA cards. It can be super useful for tracking down a performance-related bug (i.e. a massive drop in frame rate for a frame or two) more than for general optimization on PC.

Note that PIX was available for Windows for a long time, but was superseded by the GPU debugging and profiling tools integrated into recent versions of Visual Studio. I'm curious what this new PIX has that VS doesn't, as I haven't looked into it yet (unfortunately, work still has me on Windows 7)

*edit* just looked. This is only for DX12 applications, and will not do any analysis of DX11 applications, so it really only is for people looking to fine-tune or debug at a very low level.